Toronto Silly Hall

The wrong time for a city strike By SUN MEDIAFor the sake of Toronto's beleaguered property taxpayers, it's time for Mayor David Miller and council to play hardball with inside and outside city workers in ongoing contract talks.

Miller's concession stand By SUE-ANN LEVY

So the weather is heating up - as is the strike talk from the CUPE guys and gals who prop up our union-loving mayor.

Members of CUPE 416 opted 89% in favour of striking this summer if the current talks don't bear fruit (that is, if Mayor David Miller doesn't cave to their demands). I fully expect a similar strong strike mandate will come from the inside workers in CUPE 79 following their vote today.

"It (the vote) really did not come as a surprise to us," Mark Ferguson, the new president of CUPE 416, which represents 6,200 members (including 850 paramedics) told me late last week.

Yet for all the speculation around City Hall about what kind of wage hikes the CUPE unions would be willing to accept (considering that the city's non-union employees have been handed a pay freeze this year), the two sides haven't talked money yet.

In fact, Ferguson says the sticking points are issues related to employment security and seniority rights.

He explained the city has asked for an "unreasonable amount of concessions" such as eliminating seniority as the number one consideration in any competition for a new job and scaling back the number of employees subject to job protection from all permanent employees to those with 10 years of service.

Now Ferguson, a Level 3 Paramedic, seems far more reasonable and in touch with the realities of the economy than his predecessor, Brother Brian Cochrane -- even if he did tell me if the CUPE unions take a strong stand on issues they're doing other workers across Toronto a "great service."

I would argue unions never do taxpayers a great service, not one bit.

If the CUPE unions are already whining about having to give up a few concessions -- in an economy where so many Torontonians have been shown the door -- I can only imagine how willing they'll be to scale back their wage demands from the 3% hike the firefighters, police and TTC workers all got this year.

But let's be real here.

Despite all the hysteria already about the possibility of the garbage workers walking out in the heat of the summer, this vote and these negotiations are about one thing: Brinkmanship.

It's about pushing Miller and his NDP cronies on council -- who are already eyeing all their union buddies for support during the November 2010 election -- to the edge until they back down and give them everything they want.

For all his talk about being tough with the CUPE folk, King David would sooner put back on the 50 pounds he's lost than stomach a strike.

Coun. Doug Holyday said with only one former city still contracting out trash -- Etobicoke -- councillors know they need to appease the unions to avoid the stench of a garbage strike in the midst of the summer.

Kevin Gaudet, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, has no doubt organized labour's leadership will do whatever they can to get Miller to give them as much as he possibly can.

"They'll probably get a juicy, lucrative settlement," he said.

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More Miller-nomics? Our Harvard-educated mayor recently proclaimed this year's 4% property tax hike is "modest," representing less than 25 cents a day to the average Toronto homeowner. I don't know what kind of math the student of Keynesian economics was using but I just got my tax bill for the second part of the year and my property taxes have gone up by 41 cents a day -- 64% more than the mayor claimed is needed to "keep city services running during these tough economic times." And no my increase is not due to a higher MPAC assessment. But tough times, my foot. Not at Socialist Silly Hall. It's clear that while we pay, the Millerites continue to play.

SUE-ANN.LEVY@SUNMEDIA.CA

Mayor avoids traffic jam By ROB GRANATSTEIN Is anyone willing to take on Mayor David Miller?